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Jacaerys Targaryen
Jacaerys Targaryen, affectionately referred to as Jace by friends, is the third son and youngest child of the union of Aelarys Targaryen and Maelaera Targaryen. He serves as the Master of Laws in the court of his brother Aelyx Targaryen. Appearance The first thing one notices about Jace are his eyes; their deep indigo hues are fonts of color against the backdrop of pale white skin. There's a sadness behind them even when his lips curl into a smile. How couldn't there be, after all that he's lost? Somehow, his arm--or at least what's left of it--comes second. The sleeves of all his shirts have been pinned at his right shoulder. Better that than to let them hang loose beneath his twisted wreckage of a shoulder. History Early Life For all of the pomp and circumstance the Targaryens cloak themselves in, they are born like any other man: screaming, helpless, and naked. Only, Jacaerys was not born screaming. The long and difficult pregnancy had taken its toll on both his health and his mother's. He was born silent as the grave, and remained so until several days later. His frailty took longer to right; it persisted long after he could walk. While his brothers rode dragons and swung swords, he spent his time chasing breaths that always seemed to evade him. He couldn't help but feel a disappointment; Aelarys clearly had a vision in mind for his children that Jacaerys did not fulfill. Though he loved him all the same, his heart never held the same fire for him that it did for Aelyx and Maekar. Even when the frailty left him, and his breath came more easily, he preferred the soft vellum pages of dusty tomes to the hard leather of a sword pommel, and the clash of steel could never hope to compare to the soft chorus of a purse of gold. When Jacaerys turned ten, his father had enough of fighting that. He was sent to Braavos to learn from Donyrios Reyaan, the descendant of one of the Keyholders of the Iron Bank. Donyrios, who was a prominent businessman in Braavos, was quick to accept the boy as his pupil in hopes of earning influence in the Targaryen court. Braavos was to be his home. Yet, "home" was a concept the boy never quite understood. His life had been one of wandering, bouncing from court to court and from contract to contract. Almost as soon as they'd settled in somewhere, the winds of fate blew them elsewhere. There was no time to plant roots. Moving to Braavos felt no different; he would stay until his father commanded him elsewhere. Education in Braavos Administration Regardless of whatever hesitancy Jacaerys might have expressed, Donyrios took great pride in instructing the youngest dragon. As soon as he arrived, he was buried in the minutia of his mentor's operation. How much it cost to move good from place to place. How much spice cost in Volantis, jade in Yi Ti, and wine in Lys. It was Donyrios's philosophy that if the boy could not swim, he would drown. Jacaerys kept his head above water. Barely. The finer points of tradecraft eluded him, but he became a skilled administrator. The only true interruption to his studies came in 382 AC, when news reached Braavos of the death of his father. He returned to his family. He attended the funeral and cried when expected, but he did not feel ''like he had lost much. He and his father had never been close. When it was time again to depart, he did not hesitate. Braavos was not home, but it was a cheerier place than his mourning family. The Journey East On his sixteenth nameday, Donyrios presented his student with one final task: he was to lead a trade expedition to each of the Free Cities, and return with a profit. Administrating a trade empire from the comfort of one's on home was one thing. Men and margins were nothing but numbers and lines on a ledger. Leading a ship was more difficult. It put a human face on the affair. For this purpose, Donyrios furnished Jacaerys with a newly-completed trade vessel named ''The Dragon's Hoard. The Targaryen took to his task with unprecedented enthusiasm. When he reached Volantis (a city where he had to hide his true name--there were elements of the populace that did not fondly remember his brother's visit four years prior), and it came time to turn back, he decided to press on instead. Not even Slaver's Bay was enough to sate him. He made it as far as Qarth before he was forced to turn back. Yi Ti was simply too far, and the payoff too small. Time in Lys Originally intended only as a brief stopover destination on his way back to Braavos, Lys became the city in which Jacaerys spent the bulk of his trip. It was easy to lose himself in the wine and the song. Easier still to lose himself in the green eyes of a Dornish enchantress. He did not mean to care for her as much as he came to. When he first met Obara first at a Magister's ball under the guise of Jacaerys Reyaan, drunk off wine and the bliss of Lys, he had thought her only pleasant company. Her words came too easy, though, and her eyes had a manner of captivating him he did not quite understand. The fact that she introduced herself as "Princess" meant little to him. He knew only that he wanted to see her smile. He and Obara went wherever their hearts desired. Up and down the waterfronts, racing between slave-drawn wagons laden with strange wares. The more time they spent together, the closer they grew, and the less the world saw of them. The honeyed tongue of Lys could not hope to compare to the pleasure they drew from each other's sweet nothings, tangled in the cabin of his ship. The word love ''came quickly and often. Time stopped in Lys. Weeks, months--it mattered not. They had each other, and that was enough. But it couldn't stay frozen forever. When her father's business concluded, it presented them with a choice. At least, she thought it was a choice. She ''begged him to return to Dorne with her, where their relationship could continue. She promised he would want for nothing. He loved her. He wanted nothing more than to go with her. Jacaerys Reyaan could go. Jacaerys Targaryen could not. When he left her on the docks of Lys, he expected the tears. He didn't expect how much they would hurt him. Aftermath His expedition showed him sights he hadn't though possible. Pyramids that kissed the sky. Fifty foot high walls of black marble. Striped horses and the cone-headed riders. A woman he wanted, but could not have. Jacaerys kept a journal of his expedition, filled equally with Valyrian and Westerosi scripts, as well as poorly drafted sketches of the wonders he had seen. By the time he returned to Braavos in 387 AC, it was almost entirely full. In the end, his journey was successful. Barely. Though Jacaerys had the administrative prowess to run the ship, he lacked the mercantile acumen to find profit where others saw ruin. Nevertheless, he had completed the task assigned to him. The feast Danyrios threw in celebration remains a fond memory of Jacaerys's, tainted as it was by memories of the woman he had left behind. The Third Targaryen Invasion Prelude The youngest dragon remained in Braavos for some time, making the occasional trek elsewhere, until 389, when a missive arrived from his brother. He was to report to Tyrosh immediately; another attack on Westeros was nigh. While he had spent his years in Braavos, playing the part of merchant prince, his brothers had spent theirs plotting the triumphant return of House Targaryen. Returning to reality was a hard slap in the face. Whether imagined or real, there was an air of resentment between the twins and Jacaerys. Where they had stayed, he had fled. Where they had been devastated by father's passing, he had felt almost nothing at all. Perhaps it was that atmosphere--and his desire to prove his worth--that led him to dedicate himself so wholly to the invasion. By the end of their council in Tyrosh, he was placed in command of the southern arm of the invasion directed to Dorne. After all, it was there that their supply lines would be most taxed, and that his naval experience would be most valuable. The Invasion In the opening days of 390 AC, their invasion began. The initial stages were an astounding success; after the token Dornish fleet was shattered at Plankytown, forces under Jacaerys's command landed at multiple points across Dorne, beginning to siege critical locations. The logistics of the operation were impressive; the Greenblood became the main instrument of the Targaryen invasion and occupation. Orphan ships were commandeered and made to serve a new purpose: hauling Essosi supplies and troops up and down the waterway. The invasion seemed to be going as planned--an observation only supported by news of the approaching Redwyne navy. Jacaerys departed the front in order to ensure his presence at the looming naval battle. From the deck of The Dragon's Hoard, which had been re-purposed for warfare (albeit haphazardly), Jacaerys did his part to lead the Essosi fleet to victory against that of Westeros. He fought in what felt like a dozen boarding actions, the bite of his Bravo's blade cutting through leather and piercing through chainmail as though it were nothing. For a fleeting moment, it seemed victory might be theirs. It died in flames. The last thing Jacaerys remembers is The Dragon's Hoard burning. Listing. The splintering of wood, the cracking of the deck. Pain. Then, silence. The combined fleets of the Saan pirates, Myr, and Tyrosh fought valiantly against the Westerosi forces, but their disparate command structures, cultures, and languages proved their undoing. The subsequent loss in naval supremacy put the supply lines of the Targaryen invasion in peril, most of all in Dorne, where the troops had relied upon shipments of hard tack from Tyrosh to continue their advance into the unforgiving interior. The Black Cell When he awoke, it was in a place entirely unfamiliar to him: a cell. Six feet by six feet, he had barely enough room to pace from one end to the other. Not that he could. His mind was hazy, and even with what little of his lucidity the milk of the poppy had left him, he felt pain. The bones of his arm were ruins, barely concealed beneath charred flesh. He doesn't remember how long he spent there. Days, logically, but each one felt a century. A dark-skinned man with a Volantene accent permeates what cloudy memories he has. More clearly than anything, he remembers the torch he bore. It was the only light he saw in this pit they had thrown him in. Jacaerys had never been a religious man. Between the Moonsingers of Braavos, the Seven of the Andals, and the Harpy of Slaver's Bay, he had known a thousand different Gods in his lifetime. The followers of each would swear up-and-down that theirs ''was the true God--that all others were falsehoods meant to lead men astray. The same song in a different tongue fell upon deaf ears again and again. He thought them all fools. That was, until this hell. That light was his everything. He counted the moments until it returned. There was nothing to see in this pit of his, but in such darkness, simply to see was divine. For the first time since his childhood, he found himself praying. Not to the Seven of his parents, but to the Lord of Light. If anything was worthy of his worship, it was that small beacon of hope. As infection set in, and as sanity left him, his prayers only grew in fervor, until one day he could pray no more. That light came floating down the hall, and he closed his eyes for what he thought would be the last time. Fate had other plans for him. The Caged Dragon Jacaerys opened his eyes to the sounds of songbirds, the whistling of the wind, and the smell of saffron. More importantly, he opened them to ''light. ''It poured in through a barred window. The pain in his shoulder--and the disturbing absence of it below that--went unnoticed. To him, it was a sight so beautiful it made him weep. It was a calm before the storm. When she came, she was a howling tempest, pounding upon his chest and flinging whatever her hand feel upon next. He barely recognized her at first. Three years and the grief of a father's passing had molded Obara into something alien to him. There was an irony in that that he enjoys in retrospect. Finding ''her alien. Imagine how she felt. Abandoned by one's own family, only to learn that the man whom she had loved was an accomplice of the men who had killed her father. Words fail to describe how strange he must have seemed to her then. Foreign as he was, there was a part of them that remained the same. It was those parts that connected in the brief respite of her fury. They tore down those defenses, until they were bare before each other. A cripple, and a grieving daughter. He's not sure how long she cried in his grasp. Long enough that the sun had set when she left. Her visits were sparse at first. Uncertainty plagued them. Who were they to each other now? What had Lys meant to them? Over the months, that hesitation faded. If they were young and dumb then, they had not grown any smarter yet; they slipped into each other's lives just like they had before. When she came in the darkness of the night, they were not dragon and sun, nor Targaryen and Martell. They just were. Those moments were the simplest. Release Simple moments do not last. The war felt a world away, long forgotten in the minds of the lovers, until a missive signed by the now-King Axel Baratheon arrived in Storm's End. While those dark wings could have borne darker words, what it did bring was poor news all the same: The King demanded the transfer of Dorne's high value prisoners to King's Landing. Specifically, they wanted him. He had no choice in the matter, and underneath all of her posturing--all of her promises of forever and of love--she knew she didn't, either. Their last night together was a solemn affair, punctuated by a promise Jacaerys had not given to her when he had left her on the shores of Lys. He would be back. And when he returned, he would not leave her again. The End of the War His life was something his brother was unwilling to gamble with. In exchange for his release, the Third Targaryen Invasion ended. Not with the thunderous trumpets of victory, as they had envisioned, but with a soft, whimpering defeat. What little remained of their fleet ferried them across the Narrow Sea. For the third time in a hundred years, the Targaryens were left to lick their wounds and plan their return. Postbellum When they returned to Essos, the future was, and remains still, uncertain for the Targaryens--a fact that was only exacerbated by Aelyx's brash foray across the Narrow Sea. Their allies abandoned them in droves. Coin was scarce, expended on the failed invasion, but they made do. Jacaerys helped with that--his logistical and administrative skills extended to peacetime, too. Eventually, he was named to Aelyx's council as his Master of Laws, a position that he holds to this day. It is only temporary, he tells himself in his journal. Before long, he will return to Westeros. Soon, he will make good on his promise to Obara. If the path there runs red with fire and blood... Well. So be it. Timeline 370 AC - Jacaerys Targaryen, the youngest of Aelarys's brood, is born. 378 AC - Jacaerys's frailty begins to leave him. 380 AC - Jacaerys is sent to learn from Donyrios Reyaan, a Braavosi merchant. 382 AC - Aelarys dies. Jacaerys returns briefly for the funeral, only to depart again. 386 AC - Having come of age, Jacaerys leads a trade expedition across Essos. While it is barely profitable, the experience is greatly beneficial. 387 AC - After several months in Lys, Jacaerys leaves behind his lover Obara and returns to Braavos, completing his journey. 389 AC - After receiving summons from now-King Aelyx, Jacaerys heads to Tyrosh in order to help prepare for the invasion. 390 AC - The Third Targaryen Rebellion begins. After several early successes on land in Dorne and on the sea in the Stepstones, Jacaerys is captured and his assembled fleet is destroyed. During the battle, his right arm is crushed beneath a collapsing mast. The remains were amputated by Maester Xalar during his captivity in Sunspear, where he meets Obara Martell once again. His true identity is at last revealed to her. 391 AC - Jacaerys negotiates the "extradition" of the Saan pirates who killed Obara's father to Dorne. He maintains contact with her through messengers. 393 AC - Jacaerys dedicates himself to managing the affairs of his brother's court, putting his administrative prowess to the test. 398 AC - Present day. As word of King Axel's death reaches Essos, none are more overjoyed than the Targaryens. The dragon rises. Family Recent Events Supporting characters * Category:House Targaryen